Articles by Will Hall

About Will Hall

WILL HALL, MA, DIPL.PW is a counselor, teacher, writer, and
community development worker. Active during the University of
California anti-apartheid movement, he went on to work for the
Santa Cruz Resource Center for Nonviolence and the Earth
Island Institute. In his 20s he was forcibly committed to San
Francisco’s public mental health system, and, while in the locked
unit at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, he was diagnosed with
schizoaffective disorder schizophrenia and put on disability. He
became a leading psychiatric survivor organizer, including host of
Madness Radio, co-founder of Freedom Center and Portland
Hearing Voices, and a co-coordinator of The Icarus Project, and
he is author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off
Psychiatric Drugs, translated into 15 languages. For his work Will
has received the Judi Chamberlin Advocacy award, the Portland
Oregon Open Minds award, and the Stavros Center for
Independent Living Disability Advocacy award. He has appeared
in the media internationally, including Newsweek and the New
York Times, and is in the documentary films Healing Voices,
CrazyWise, and Coming Off Psych Drugs. A longtime meditator
and yoga practitioner, Will is a PhD candidate in the School of
Mental Health and Neuroscience at Maastricht University, The
Netherlands, and he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. For
more info and to contact Will, go to www.willhall.net.
“When I was growing up, I wanted to be a magician. Then I
wanted to be a biologist, then I wanted to be a psychologist, then I
wanted to be a community organizer, then I wanted to be a
philosopher. Now I’m sort of all of them.”
— Will Hall interviewed in the Portland Mercury newspaper

Spiritual practice is not for everyone, but sometimes survivors of psychosis have a calling to discover the truth in the world’s mystical traditions. This essay summarizes some of the lessons I’ve learned exploring altered states. […]